Daily Archives: August 9, 2006

What might have been

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carlos beltran points his fingers.jpgThis NY Times article checks in on Mets centerfielder, Carlos Beltran, who the Stros rented during their incredible second half drive to win a 2004 post-season berth and come within a game of their first World Series. Beltran had a disappointing, injury-plagued season last year (-2 RCAA/.330 OBA/.414 SLG/.744 OPS), his first as a Met, but he is making up for it this season (39/.384/.619/1.003) as the Mets are the favorite at this point to win the National League pennant.
Although Beltran is a wonderful talent, my sense still is that the Stros probably made the right move in not paying the $120 million over seven years that it would have taken to retain him after the 2004 season (see earlier posts here and here). Lance Berkman is only a year older than Beltran and has generated over 200 more RCAA than Beltran during their respective careers, so it would be hard to rationalize paying Berkman less than Beltran. That would tie up over $40 million in payroll for a long-term in two players, which the Stros learned was a tough pill to swallow during the declines of former sluggers Jeff Bagwell and Richard Hidalgo. Moreover, just to put it in the perspective of this season, even if Beltran were added to the Stros lineup, the club’s combined RCAA/RSAA numbers reflect that the Stros would still be behind the Cardinals and the Reds in the National League Central race, although they obviously would be closer than they are now and would have a better chance of overtaking those two clubs for a post-season berth.
Thus, even as good as Beltran is, I still like better the flexibility that the Stros will have after this season when about $40 million in payroll attributable to Bags, Pettitte, Clemens, etc. comes off the books. That should be enough to buy the 2-3 additional hitters that the club needs to turn around the downward trend in hitting that the Stros have experienced since the 2000 season.

Houston’s ambassador of learning

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lienhard.gifOne of the many people that make Houston such a remarkable place is John Lienhard, the longtime University of Houston engineering professor who is the author and voice of the popular KUHF radio series — Engines of our Ingenuity — which is carried across the nation by more than 40 National Public Radio affiliates. As Professor Lienhard describes it, Engines is “a mix of history, engineering and science. The programs describe the machines that make civilization run, and the people who devise them.”
Lienhard recently completed his 2,000th segment of Engines, so the Chronicle’s science writer Eric Berger used the occasion to interview Professor Lienhard. A part of the interview is here, and Eric’s podcast of the entire 30-minute interview is here. The following is Professor Lienhard’s response to Eric’s inquiry as to what he considers the greatest invention:

I don’t like to identify “greatest inventions.” I think inventions flow and swirl and intertwine with one another. There was a wonderful piece by Salman Rushdie where he described stories as flowing like different colors in a great sea, and what you do is dip in and pull out one of those stories. But they’re intermixed and intertwined with other stories. There’s the constant flow and ebb of stories, and the same is true of invention. And there’s another reason. In the book I finally say we’re in trouble when we talk about inventions. The airplane was not an invention. It was something else. I give it a word, multigenium. … They are these accrued inventions that we finally point out and say this is the final thing, like Wright Brothers’ airplane, or Morse’s telegraph, which followed something like 70 years of working with electric telegraphy. We call that thing in a finished form the invention, but it’s not an invention.

El Paso’s rebound

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elpaso.bmpJust a year of so ago, Houston-based El Paso Corp. looked as if it was a prime candidate to be the city’s next big corporate reorganization.
That’s not the case anymore. Earlier this week, El Paso announced that it had earned a $141 million profit in the second quarter on revenue of $1.21 billion. The natural gas pipeline company had a net loss of $246 million (38 cents a share) on $1.17 in revenues during the second quarter last year.
Good job, El Paso.